First-Ever Annenberg Media Reporting Guide Released

In one of the most concrete efforts yet to better Annenberg Media, specialized journalism in the arts master’s student Steven Vargas has penned a reporting and style guide for the student-led newsroom.

The guide, officially titled “Annenberg Media’s Guide for Equitable Reporting Strategies and Newsroom Style,” was written by Vargas after he became a founding editor of Annenberg Media’s Equity Board. According to Vargas, the document is a culmination of his time at Annenberg and addresses how to properly report on and interact with marginalized communities of all kinds. This guide will serve as the standard in which all student journalists in the newsroom will report and create under. It will be required reading for curricular students and shared across the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, which funds newsroom operations.

Vargas anticipates that this guide will serve as a learning experience for every journalist in the newsroom. “I hope that people are more comfortable covering communities that they are unfamiliar with.” There is still much to learn, and this reporting guide will be the source of a lot of knowledge. “I hope that all the issues at Annenberg Media start to become alleviated or people feel like they’re more comfortable to educate themselves,” Vargas said.

For example, the guide offers an extensive history of the South LA area, how to report on cultural events and how to pitch inclusive story ideas. Vargas solicited guidance from student associations across campus as well.

In a section titled “Prejudice, Privilege and Power,” Vargas notes, “The point is to steer clear from objectivity and instead embrace transparency. If you don’t understand something, say it… Instead of sticking to your perspective, broaden your point of view.”

During Vargas’ senior year, he was asked by Professor Miki Turner to put together a style guide about proper reporting on the LGBTQ+ community for the Annenberg Cross Cultural Student Association. This sparked Vargas’ interest in creating a more comprehensive guide that handled a wider range of reporting practices.

“Things like this, like what Steven has done, challenge the way people think and how they will approach their work from now on,” Turner said. “It will be enlightening and educational and informative.”

The introduction to this equitable reporting guide is anecdotal, as Vargas used his personal experiences within Annenberg to stress the importance of the guide’s creation. Vargas used his involvement in USG, the LGBTQ student center, QUASA and his theater background as inspiration throughout the process.

“My theater experience also helped a little bit, because that’s where I got my start in discussing these issues on a larger scale. Social change kind of just became something that is part of my career now,” Vargas said.

Turner believes this document will offer incredible teaching moments and hopefully unify the newsroom. She is proud of the groundwork that Vargas has now laid within Annenberg. “I’m so happy that it exists and I’m so happy that he wanted to do it because that’s a lot of work,” Turner said, “Now we have this guide that’s going to permanently live in the Media Center and it’s all because of him.”

To Vargas and other student journalists from marginalized communities, this guide is a long time coming. For both Turner and Vargas, the act of it being published and put to use feels like a step in the right direction.

“Being able to write about the things that I felt needed to be addressed with Annenberg Media was really rewarding because sometimes it feels like I’m talking about these issues and they’re being thrown to the wind and nothing really happens,” Vargas said. “Doing this felt like I was actually doing something about it and taking action despite what anyone else said.”

This equitable reporting guide will exist as a living, breathing document found at bit.ly/AnnMediaEquitableReportingGuide. It will be routinely updated to the best of the newsroom’s abilities. To provide feedback to the Equity Board click this link.